


Lionheart

by emmaliza



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Age Difference, Complicated Relationships, Established Relationship, Guilt, Implied/Referenced Incest, M/M, Multi, Three-Eyed Raven!Bran, post-sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-20
Updated: 2019-04-20
Packaged: 2020-01-20 19:05:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18531265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emmaliza/pseuds/emmaliza
Summary: “It was brave of you to come back here.”Or, Jaime tries to make amends to someone he wronged, if that person is there at all.





	Lionheart

“It was brave of you to come back here.”

The comment would catch Jaime less off-guard if it came earlier, weeks earlier, when he first arrived at this frozen stack of stones and was caught in the cold eyes of Brandon Stark, and hands of a good many others he'd wronged. Before his skin was still red and sweating, heart pounding, and he'd long since started to warm the boy's bed.

It takes him a moment to regain his composure. “It may be,” he says, rolling on his side to face the boy. They look a twisted parody of lovers. “What's it to you?”

“Oh. Nothing.” And little Bran Stark looks as smug as ever, the divine arrogance of someone who is more god than boy now.

Jaime huffs in irritation. He knows he's always been arrogant, but he was never on this level – he couldn't be. _There are no men like me,_ he once told the boy's mother, but Bran is something more than a man. It's a battlefield on which he can't compete, and Jaime hates the thought of there being such a thing. “Then why did you ask?” he snaps.

“To see how you'd respond.”

That is no less irritating. Some would laugh to see a man of his age take up with such a young boy – but Jaime can hardly feel like he's taking advantage of an innocent, when Bran always seems to know so much more than him. In bed with Bran Stark, Jaime feels less like a lover and more like a pet, whose strange behaviours Bran is sometimes amused by. Under different circumstances, such a thought might have some appeal.

“I came here because this is where the fight is,” he says, slipping reluctantly into sincerity. “The great fight. I know I've done a lot of wrongs in my time, but in the battle of life and death, I've always been on the side of life.”

Bran doesn't answer that for a long time, but he smiles. Jaime still doesn't know how to read that. Then: “And fucking me?” Bran says the word as coolly as any other. “Is that to save life itself?”

Jaime hesitates. No, he cannot say that is necessary to defeat the White Walkers and guarantee the realm survives to tear itself apart again twenty years from now. And yet.

He has committed many sins in his time, but Bran Stark looms high above them all. Or perhaps he only thinks that because only one of his victims has let him suck their cock afterwards. Still, whenever he sees the boy he's reminded what he did, why he did it, and how pointless it was in the end. He's reminded of Cersei, how soft her long gold hair was in his hands, and what has become of her now. He wonders when she became such a thing, how he could have missed it for so long, and just how blinded by love he was.

Bran Stark is not the innocent boy Jaime once through from a window, but still, Jaime offers himself up like a sacrifice, a futile attempt to please the boy who has every right to want his head. To make amends, he supposes – so few of the people he has to do that to are even alive to receive it. He caresses the boy sweetly with his mouth and his hand and cock every night, pleases him as he once did the woman he almost murdered him for, and it never works – the boy's body still works just fine, Jaime didn't break _that_ part of it at least, and he's seen Bran Stark come on his prick a dozen times. But it never reaches his face. After they lie together Bran is the same as always, because what Jaime did to him no longer concerns him. No matter how much it concerns Jaime.

“It is a war,” he points out. “Men are known to do strange things just before they die.”

“Do you think you're going to die?” Bran asks. Jaime sighs. If there's one way in which he's still a boy, it's his habit for bloody annoying questions.

“I don't know,” he says. “And if you do know, I'd rather you not tell me.” He closes his eyes and burrows into the pelts upon Lord Brandon's bed. He's starting to feel very tired.

He hears a small sound, almost a chuckle. It's so _human_ that it throws him again. “It's alright.” Gentle fingers caress his jaw. They're warm. “You don't have to be brave all the time.”

Jaime opens his eyes once more. He's not afraid of dying. He's never been afraid of dying, not since he was a squire – he doesn't think so, anyway. When he looks into Bran Stark's river-blue eyes ( _like his mother's,_ thinks Jaime, and then he winces when he remembers the promise she did not live to see him keep), he sees something unfamiliar there. Whatever it is, it's more like the terror before the threw the boy from that tower eight years ago than he's seen since he came here.

Bran's hands ghost along him softly, feeling the naked skin beneath the furs, mapping him like he's unconquered territory. He's gentler than Cersei ever was. Jaime swallows the lump in his throat, the feeling that he is, and always has been, no more than a pawn in this game.

“Why should I have to apologise to you?” he whispers. “You're not Bran Stark. When I threw him from that tower, I threw him to his death. Is there anything left of him in you?”

Bran pauses. Jaime doesn't know what reaction to expect, if any at all. Then, he smiles. His warm hand curls around Jaime's neck.

“If there is, you're the only man who's found it.”

Jaime is pulled into a kiss, and lets it happen. As ever, he is the knight who obeys his ruler.

 


End file.
